Haunted Dreams
by thag-the-upset
Summary: The final installment in Cloud's Trilogy. Cloud has finally been reunited with his friends, but happiness seems to be fleeting. . .


HAUNTED DREAMS  
  
A/N: Please forgive my long vacation from my writings, It has been too long. Anyway, "Fall of the OneWinged Angel" and its sequel, "The Next Fight" (boy what a lame title.) have gotten too many reviews to keep me from my favorite saga. So I've decided to continue with the next (and most likely last) chapter. For those of you who haven't read the other two stories, the focus has been on Cloud's POV in his quest to find Aerith at any cost. Please read and review and I'll try to do the same.  
  
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We had been searching for who knows how long, knowing that for every step towards her we took, Sephiroth was three steps ahead. Finally, on a pillar standing in a pool of water. . .  
  
"Aer. . ." I whispered, afraid that saying her name too loud would cause the sight of her to vanish. I quietly leapt from stone to stone, determined not to disturb her obvious focus. I finally landed next to her.  
  
My body suddenly tensed and my vision blurred as I felt my nemesis' presence force itself over my body's control. Panic raced though what little sense I still had as, against my will, I raised the Buster Sword over my head. At the last second, with all my strength, I stopped myself from making the crushing blow.  
  
She then opened her eyes and looked up at me. She smiled. For one all-too-fleeting moment, the world fell away and the two of us were together. I knew peace.  
  
Then, like a black veil over a wondrous sunrise, he fell from the sky. His Masamune pointed downward. I stood, frozen in disbelief and terror as I realized what he had planned. I wanted to do something, anything! But I could only watch as Sephiroth snuffed out the one remaining thing I cared for, right before my eyes.  
"NO!" I screamed sitting up.  
  
My eyes darted around in the darkness, seeking the murderer.  
  
"Oh no, not again." Came a gentle voice in the bed beside me.  
  
It had been a week since I had purged myself of darkness, and summoned up the courage to face my love again. Seven wondrous days of joy, laughter and peace. Each one followed by another sleepless night of terror as that most horrific moment woke me every time I rested. I stood out of bed, disgusted with myself. "I'm sorry," I murmured.  
  
"It's okay," Aerith replied, sitting up. "It really is okay."  
  
"I'm not talking about just now," I replied.  
  
Although my back was turned, I could tell she was smiling. "I know. . ."  
  
"Why?" I whispered as my voice began to crack, "Why do I keep seeing it? Why can't I just be at PEACE?!" I stood there sobbing for a moment, furious at my own weakness.  
  
Her arms reached around my chest and she lay her head on my shoulder. "Listen, my love," she said quietly, "No one, no one here blames you for that day. Not Cid, not Yuffie, not even I. The only person who hates you for what happened is you." I suddenly felt a drop of moisture fall onto my lower back. "I love you, and we're finally together again. That's all that matters." Another drop. "I pains me so to see you suffer like this. I would give anything to give you your peace. Anything."  
  
My sobbing had stopped, and I could hear her trying to choke back her tears. Oh god. What was it, what had I done to get so wonderful a person to care about so worthless an emotional deadweight like me? "I know you would Aer," was all I said as I moved my hands to hers and unlocked her embrace.  
  
I quickly threw on my shirt and boots before stepping out into the halls of Hollow Bastion. I walked to the roof and gazed out at the sky. For a moment I was pleased to see the stars were beginning to return now that Sora had sealed Kingdom Hearts.  
  
"We all love you, ya know?"  
  
I chuckled to myself, Yuffie had been practicing her stealth, and it showed every time she sneaked up on me. "Sometimes I wish you didn't," I replied without turning, "I would never wish such an emotional burden on anyone, much less my dearest friends."  
  
The ninja was silent for a long time and I thought she had left.  
  
"Don't say that." She said at last. "You are worth it. Do you hear me? You are worth it."  
  
It was my turn to be quiet. "Something's, wrong. . ." I finally said. "Somehow, Sephiroth's spirit continues to haunt me. It's only a matter of time before it consumes me." I took a short pause to hold back my tears. "Don't misunderstand. Despite the dreams and restless nights, being here with all of you has brought me more joy than I can ever remember having." I sighed and took a deep breath. "But you're wrong. I wake everyone up at all hours, I cause you all so much worry; and worst of all, my very presence here endangers all your lives." I finally turned and looked at her shocked, terrified face. "I, I don't know when I might lose control again. I can't stay."  
  
Her lips trembled as her eyes began to tear up. "Take care of Aerith, and tell her I will be back." And with that I back-flipped over the edge, and soon as my feet touched the ground I took off running.  
  
I ran for what must have been hours, not once looking back at the castle that had made me so happy this past week. I finally stopped in a clear meadow surrounded by dense forest. "I'm sorry old friend," I said as I approached the Buster Sword I had left behind in the center of a stone ring. "But it looks like I need you one last time."  
  
I held my blade in my hands, surprised at it's weight which constant use had thus far made me ignore. I approached one of the trees nearby and readied a practice swing. Then it hit me. It had been some time since I swung my sword without the help of Hades' dark gift. With a flick of my wrist I flipped my weapon to it's blunt side and struck the tree with all my might.  
  
An explosion of wood chips confirmed I was as strong as I was before all this. My pride was short-lived though, as the force of the blow suddenly caused my arms to ache. "Damn. . ." I muttered through grit teeth as I dropped the sword. "Have I really been relying on my dark powers this much?"  
  
"It can't be helped." A familiar voice called from behind me.  
  
I spun around and retrieved my weapon in one smooth motion and assumed a battle stance. What I saw froze me in terror.  
  
There across the meadow stood a man wearing a tattered red cape, a navy blue SOLDIER's uniform and a golden claw on his left hand. He had blonde spiky hair and eyes that seemed to give off a dim azure glow. I managed to regain a little composure, "Who are you?!" I hollered.  
  
An evil crossed his lips, "I am everything you loathed, you feared about the person you hated most in the whole Multiverse." I was about to demand him to explain himself, but he cut me off. "No! Not Sephiroth. Look into the very core of your being, there is someone worse. Have you forgotten the reason why she left your party in the first place?"  
  
"No!" I shouted at the fiend. "No, I'll NEVER forget that!" My voice fell to a hushed whisper. "It was me. . . I, I hurt her. I felt him, Sehpiroth, take over my body. Because of him, because he made me. . ."  
  
In a flash, my look-alike rushed up to me and drove his fist into my gut. I gasped and coughed up some blood as I fell to my knees. Who was this? How could he, how could anyone be so strong? "Silence your pitiful excuses, coward!" he growled. "You did it! You beat her beautiful face to a bloody pulp! It was YOU!" I couldn't even follow his booted foot's flight to my face, causing me to fall backwards onto my back. "You hurt her, you made her run, you made her DIE!" He then grabbed my shirt's collar and pulled me up to his face. "This is who I am!" he screamed with a mad cry.  
  
The now-cloudy night sky seemed to reach down and surround him in dark shadows. In a blood-red flash he reappeared. But his eyes. His eyes now burned with a fire of madness and hatred. A single, black demon's wing burst out of his left shoulder in a shower of blood. And his right hand reached behind him and drew out a massive sword, identical to mine. He chuckled darkly, "Like looking in a mirror, huh?"  
  
"Oh god," I said as the realization dawned on me. I kicked off his chest in a mad panic to get free. Even though I got loose, he didn't even flinch from the impact. I scrambled for my blade and swung it in a wide arc. He vanished before to blow could land.  
  
"Yes," he hissed from behind me. I turned and stumbled backwards. "It is as you suspect. I am your inner rage, your self-loathing, your feelings of worthlessness all rolled into one!" He made a vertical slash, and managed to land a glancing blow on my left foot as I dodged. He paused to lick my blood off his weapon. "Yes, your blood is a sweet as I dreamt it would be. I should thank you really." He made a small bowing gesture, "It is because you tore this dark energy from you with Oblivion that I was able to have corporeal form!"  
  
With terrifying speed he hurled his buster sword, end over end, at me. I parried the blade aside, but my arms were already beginning to ache from the impact. My double raised his hand, and the weapon flew into his grip.  
  
"What do you want?" I barked at my evil twin, "It's obvious you hold all the power I ever had and more, so why don't you just end it?"  
  
To my surprise, his face suddenly contorted with great anger and fury. "All this time. . ." he began quietly. "All this time, we've been one. Ever since the beginning. When you pushed those bullies in anger, I was there. When you fought in Shinra, I was there. When you saved the world, avenged your love and killed your worst enemy, all at ONCE, I WAS THERE!!!" He trembled so much with rage he seemed about to burst. "I AM A PART OF YOU! I AM YOUR STRENGTH! I AM WHAT MADE US WHAT WE ARE!! Yet you cut me out like a cancer, without a second thought."  
  
The very air around him suddenly exploded, hurling him elbow-first into my gut, and plowing us both through a tree. "And yet," he continued as he punched my face repeatedly, "I'm more merciful than that." He laughed maniacally, "Kill you? HA! No, no, no. I just want to go back, to be together again!" He stopped and pulled my face up to his. "Surely you feel it too, a darkness, an emptiness in the farthest reaches of your soul! No, you, you just have bad dreams!"  
  
He then lifted my limp body by the ankles and smashed me against another tree. I felt several bones crack and the pain managed to escape in the form of a scream of agony. "Yes!" He hissed as he dropped me on the ground. "It's like that! This is the pain, the hunger, the yearning I've felt every second of every day since we split." He pulled me up to face him again. "But I can make it stop, for both of us. Should we rejoin, we would be at peace, we would become stronger than ever before, and you'd never need to feel pain ever again. What do you say?"  
  
I could only muster enough strength to fire a blood-filled blob of spit into his eye. "Go to hell," I wheezed.  
  
"Yes, well you forget," he wiped my spit off his face, "I was there for that too." He dropped me on the ground and retrieved his sword, or mine, I couldn't tell the difference. He towered over me and drew back the blade, readying a final blow. "I guess I'll just have to settle for taking your place."  
  
I closed my eyes and decided to accept my destiny.  
  
A shower of warm blood made me look up with a start. He stood, the same as before, but now a small, bloody blade stuck out of his chest. "No," a quiet third voice said from behind him, "I like the real Cloud's idea better." The area around the blade then exploded and my twin dissolved in a cloud of black smoke. When it cleared, I saw the wielder of the blade, even though I only knew one person with such a weapon.  
  
"Thank you Squall." I said as I dropped my head back down to the ground in exhaustion.  
  
"Whatever . . ." He replied as he administered an elixir to me. "I wasn't doing this for you." He spoke with a quiet, yet powerful voice. "I was doing this for her. And if you ever do something as stupid as this to Aerith ever again, it'll be you next time."  
  
I stood up and gave him a sidelong glance, "Yeah, don't tell her I said so, but that goes the same for you and Yuffie." For just a second, I thought I saw the smallest grin cross his face before he turned back towards home.  
  
"Let's go. . ." was all he said. We walked back through the rest of the night in silence. By the time Hollow Bastion crept over the horizon, the rising sun framed the castle perfectly, and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  
  
"Think Aer would mind if I took a nap to heal from the ordeal?" I asked the youth.  
  
He looked at me with a hard-to read expression, "Think you can do it without waking the dead?"  
  
I looked over my shoulder back toward where we came from, "Yeah, I think that at long last, I've finally put my demons to rest."  
  
THE END  
  
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A/N: PHEW! This was the fic that wouldn't die! Anyway, I think that's enough of the Cloud Saga. Please read and review (No flames, but constructive critisim is okay) this and my other stories please. I'm having a crisis over whether or not to continue my Metroid Fic "The Truth About Metriods and Space Pirates" and I would very much enjoy your input. Thank you for wasting your time on my story, 'till next time! 


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